New endowed professorships at Grambling rightly recognize the lasting accomplishments of two departed legends, coach and administrator Fred Hobdy and sports information director Collie J. Nicholson.
Hobdy won a national championship in 1961 at Grambling, part of a 30-year tenure as basketball coach. He was also a football player and assistant, and later served as athletics director through 1996. Nicholson, dubbed “The Man With the Golden Pen” during his celebrated stay as Grambling SID, is credited as the brains behind the Bayou Classic.
“It was important for Grambling State University to honor these two giants,” school president Horace Judson told me. “Because of their excellence, they cemented their place in the history of the university that goes well beyond athletics.”
The professorships, approved by Grambling’s overseeing University of Louisiana System board, are officially titled the Fredrick C. Hobdy Endowed Professorship in Kinesiology and the Collie J. Nicholson Endowed Professorship in Mass Communication.
Nicholson’s flair for promotion helped spawn celebrated football games at Yankee Stadium in the 1960s and in Hawaii and Japan in the 1970s. And by the time Nicholson retired in 1978, Grambling had played football in 27 of the 50 states, he once told me. A television program featuring team highlights, with comments from legendary former football coach Eddie Robinson, aired on 90 stations across the nation. He wrote stories about Grambling athletics that regularly ran in hundreds of newspapers.
Nicholson, who died in 2006, was widely recognized late in his life for those historic marketing breakthroughs, all accomplished in the days before facsimile, modem and cable.
“When people think of Grambling, they think of Eddie Robinson, and rightfully so. But the one who taught people about him was Collie J.,” said Doug Williams, the former GSU quarterback and football coach. “He’s the reason all of America knows about all that we did.”
Nicholson had been inducted into the Grambling and the Southwestern Athletic Conference halls of fame. He received CoSIDA’s Trailblazer Award in 2002 and the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism in 1990. The Robinson Stadium press box on campus was renamed for Nicholson in the year before his passing.
Hobdy, a member of the Louisiana Sports and SWAC halls, earned 572 victories between 1957-86. His teams won seven Southwestern Athletic Conference titles and the National Athletic Intercollegiate Association championship in ’61 — the last men’s national title from his state of Louisiana. But that’s not the full measure of Hobdy’s legacy. A three-sport letter winner at Grambling, Hobdy is perhaps best known as a collegiate athlete for his contribution to a legendary 1942 squad that went unbeaten, even unscored upon, under Eddie Robinson. Hobdy died in 1998.
The endowed professorship for Hobdy was first mentioned by protege Willis Reed, an eventual NBA Hall of Famer, in 2005.
“‘Hob’ loved Grambling,” widow Mary Hobdy told me. “When the idea came up, I was really thrilled that his name will continue in perpetuity at this university.” (Mary Hobdy was secretary to former Grambling president R.W.E. Jones “Prez” from 1956-77, as well.)
Hobdy squads also earned two championships in the Midwest Conference that Grambling called home before joining the SWAC, along with two NCAA regional championships and four NAIA district titles. Fifteen of his 30 GSU teams won 20 or more games. Two won 30 or more.
In fact, Hobdy still holds the men’s hoops record for career victories in this state — despite retiring more than two decades ago.
[...] removed their own names from consideration. The initial nine are R.W.E. Jones, Eddie G. Robinson, Fred Hobdy, Collie J. Nicholson, Willie Brown, Junious “Buck” Buchanan, Willie Davis, Charlie Joiner and Willis Reed. The [...]